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The Parallax View

"You see things that are open in the net that aren't there if you look through the eyes of the puck," assistant GM-coach Jim Shoenfeld said yesterday after running some of his players through a shooting drill designed to help them see openings in the net better. In photography, they call it parallax -- the difference between what you see through a viewfinder versus what the shutter actually sees in non-SLR cameras, a slight but distinct shift in point view that throws things off just enough to ruin carefully composed pictures. In a camera, it's caused by parallel views that are just an inch or so apart -- for a shooter, the difference between what he sees and the angle of the puck on the stick is much greater. Does it make that much of a difference? Schoenfeld thinks so.

Things were supposed to get easier for the Rangers as the schedule got easier. From the last day of November, the day their fortunes turned sour, through the end of January, they played nearly half their games against the eleven teams currently ahead of them in the league standings, going 1-9-1 -- they were 12-1-1 against the eighteen teams with worse records. But the Rangers got no relief despite the schedule easing up in February -- during their current 2-8-4 collapse, they are 1-5-4 against teams below them in the standings (taking into account that Florida just inched ahead of them the other night).

The schedule remains light over the next four weeks, with nine games against teams below them and only four against top ten teams, four of those among the five worst teams in the league, beginning with Colorado tonight. If the Rangers want to make their last six games meaningful -- five of them against top teams -- they are going to have to resume taking advantage of the teams they should beat.

In the news today, mostly about Sean Avery's impending return to the Rangers -- Newsday, Record, Post, and the Sporting News. Hartford won its fifth straight since Avery's debut -- see Howlings, WP.com, and Beyond the Blueshirts. More from the Post on goal scoring (here) and John Tortorella (here). The NHL admitted making mistakes in how it handled the apparent Brandon Dubinsky goal in the opening minute of the last game, but did not admit that they would have ruled the goal good as a result -- see Blue Notes and Rangers Report. Previews of tonight's game -- Rangers Report, NYR.com, and NHL.com -- one line-up change, Fred Sjostrom returning in place of Aaron Voros. Prospect Park makes soup.

Notes and Quotes

As previously reported, John Tortorella was happy with the way his team played last night depsite their loss. "I thought we did some really good things," he said. "Our pressure was outstanding. Other than for a few minutes, we controlled the game. Other than that we played a hell of a game. We just can't score a goddamn goal, that's all. We just can't finish. We can't cut the line so fine here and be 1-0 again. We have to get that second goal so that type of situation doesn't hurt you. We're going to keep at it, keep banging at the team concept. I am looking forward to keep growing with the team because they've picked up on how we want to play."

Perhaps the pivotal point in the game was when the team took a 1-0 lead into the third period and started with two consecutive power plays, including a five-on-three. "You don't take advantage of the chances you get, they do bite you," Wade Redden said. "Five-on-three, we talked about a little bit but we didn't get a chance to work on it. We got a few quick plays to the net. We tried to get to the side of the net, get it jammed to the net, hopefully get a bounce. It didn't happen that way -- the puck bounced out of the zone and we didn't get anything after that. Obviously that's a big part of the game right there. Guys just have to relax and let the skills take over. Zherdev [who played the point during the two-man advantage] is so good with the puck -- once he works on it a bit, just get comforatble and plays will come."

Torts Not Yet Out of Sorts

There's always a honeymoon period after something like a coaching change. Except that usually refers to the grace period the coach gets as he learns his way around his new team and his new environment. For John Tortorella, the question after two consecutive 2-1 losses is how long the honeymoon period will last for his team -- how long before the grace period he has granted them to show him what they are all about runs out.

Two games in, Tortorella remains happy with what he sees from his guys, even though they still can't score enough goals to win games they dominated. Two games in, Tortorella is not worried about a power play that failed on two consecutive chances to extend a 1-0 lead at the start of the third period, including a five-on-three. Two games in, Tortorella had to explicitly tell the media in both of his post-game press conferences that he is not angry at his team. Two games in, Tortorella insists that Chris Drury is going to start scoring goals very very soon, even though it's now forty days and forty nights (seventeen games) since he last scored.

Two games in, Tortorella is learning more and more about what this team was really about in the 61 games they played before his arrival. He saw not only how they fail to win games on the power play when they have a chance, he also saw how they make mediocre goalies look like world beaters -- Craig Anderson, who gave up 17 goals in his prior ten periods of action, made 40 saves to take first star of the game, just as Vesa Toskala made 70 saves against the Rangers in the prior two games (he gave up more tonight to the Islanders than the three goals he held the Rangers to over 125 minutes of play).

Two games in -- in just his first game in "Madison Square" -- and Tortorella heard the most concerted "Fire Sather" chants to rock the Garden since 2004. He's only had two games to judge whether Sather was right about having acquired players who could still play the way they once did for other teams. That's not enough time. Yet. He believes his team is getting enough good scoring chances that they will eventually start scoring. But they didn't become last in the league in scoring for lack of opportunty -- they rank sixth in the league in shots on goal and have launched 317 more shot attempts than their opponents this season (145-92 in Tortorella's two games alone, 73-46 in shots on goal).

Still, there is good reason to believe that things will turn around soon, if they keep working hard. No NHL team can go this long with this many chances and continue to come away with just one goal a game -- they will start scoring. The changes Tortorella made on the power play will start to reap results -- the rotation during five-on-fours, getting the puck down low during the five-on-three and looking for lateral puck movement to open things up. The question is, what will happen first, the Rangers starting to score more or opponents starting to take advantage of them on the counterattack -- it took two and a half periods for the Panthers to take advantage of the chances they got, having blown myriad odd man rushes until they finally broke through.

Rangers Give Torts the Renney-Round in Debut

John Tortorella should consider himself lucky. In his first game as Ranger coach, he got to see who his Rangers really are, not an illusion of the type that sometimes accompanies a coaching change. Now he knows what he's up against -- a team that can skate circles around the opposition, but not for sixty minutes, and with paltry results. He got to see the team we've seen all season, one that can go one period without many meaningful scoring chances, a second period without being able to finish enough of their many meaningful scoring chances, and a third period in which they apparently are so full of themselves after two good periods that they sit back and blow the lead.

It would have been nice had the Rangers carried over their two-period effort into the third period and won by at least the 1-0 margin they took into that period. It would have been even nicer had they built a larger margin through the first two periods, when they outshot the Leafs by 24-12 (attempting 55 shots to the Leafs' 31). It would have been acceptable had they managed to pull out the win in the shootout, as they did most of the season, though they have been unable to do so during this swoon that now stands at 2-7-4, with that last column made up of three shootout losses and one OT loss. Instead, they finished the season series against the Leafs with just five goals in four games versus a team that allows a league-worst three and a half goals per game, giving up all nine goals against in the third period or overtime of the three losses.

Welcome Signs of Life

UPDATE: The Rangers claimed winger Mark Bell on re-entry waivers from the Toronto Maple Leafs, according to TSN. The 6'4-220 pound one-time 25-goal scorer will be a free agent at the end of this season -- the Rangers and Leafs will split what remains of his $2.5 million salary cap hit this season. Bell has a troubled past that includes a hit-and-run drunk driving incident and a resulting month-long suspension and stint in the NHL's substance abuse program. He had just 27 points in 56 AHL games this season.

Yesterday was a strange day in Rangerland for me. Tom Renney, who had been the coach during my entire tenure covering the team, had literally fallen off the face of the earth, gone without a good-bye one day after being the omnipresent ruler of the roost. Gone was the calmness that always made the inside of the MSG Training Center (at least the Rangers' half) as unassuming as the nondescript exterior, replaced by a giddyness and near frenzy that seemed appropriate to John Tortorella.

Gone too was the pall that had descended over the place in recent weeks as the team floundered and the coach was put on notice. There wasn't exactly a sense of hope in its place, not with most observers still skeptical that any coach can get some of these Rangers to play up to a past potential that may be just that -- in the past. But there was the unmistakable buzz of the Rangers being a story again, a team that will have at least one personality behind the bench, a personality that will do his damnedest to bring that personality to the ice as well.

Tortorella Will Send Stars Out On the Attack

With just 21 games left to turn around a team that has gone 2-7-3 in the last twelve, new head coach John Tortorella doesn't have much time to figure out what he has to work with and what he wants to do with it. So his plan is to let his best players do what they do best and slowly bring them up to speed. "How much do we give them in such a short period of time?" he asked rhetorically after his first practice. "I don't want to confuse them. I haven't seen them play that much. I'm trying to figure out who they are. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you I know what they're about -- I don't. I know how I want them to play. I need to be cognizant of what you have as personnel -- can they play your style? After one practice, I don't have a clue. We have three games in four nights and that's where we'll see what they're about and how they grasp some of the little things we're going to change."

The big things Tortorella wants to change are confidence and philosophy. "We do have a philosophical difference," he said about his initial conversations with players about what he plans to change. "So we touched on that, where we're gonna go to try to get back in the win column. There's no question [we want to be an attack team]. We're not gonna trap. I've always liked the pressure game. We're gonna try to pressure, and we'll see how our guys handle it." The Rangers started the season trying to be exactly that kind of team, the kind of team GM Glen Sather tried to shape them into over the summer. But when other teams started scoring in bunches after a record-setting start, ousted coach Tom Renney started to rein the team in defensively. Tortorella had do the same thing in Tampa last season. "I've gotta be careful," he said. "I made a major mistake in Tampa last year when I was too aggressive and our D couldn't handle it and it cost us. I made a huge mistake in not changing that -- I waited too long. I need to see what these guys can handle in terms of the style we want to play."

First, he just wants to see what they can do, so he will let them play their game, mainly to help them get their confidence back. "Listen, I'm going to push them," he said. "But you also as a coach have to understand when you need to be with them. As a coach, you better understand what your team is right now. This is a time to get them to feel decent about themselves. They need to get some confidence. We're going to allow them to work through that. It's my job to allow them to express themselves. They're beat up. The most important thing for a hockey team is, what is your identity? That's what's difficult, in such a short span, creating that identity and not giving them too much [to do]. Because we need to win -- we're in a dogfight. I gotta wait and see how they accept some of the things we're trying to do, and then we'll slowly go about crafting that identity."

Pre-Torts

John Tortorella conducted his first practice as Ranger head coach this morning and then stepped out for his first press conference. Well, he mostly watched as Jim Schoenfeld ran practice, trying to learn what he can about his players in time to get them ready to play three games in four nights starting tomorrow night in Toronto. But he came out on his own to face the media for the first time and aced it. Here are a few quick hits to mull over while we transcribe the interview:

The practice was uptempo, focusing on skating and puck skills rather than X's and O's. Schoeny used some of his favorite drills, starting off with a two-man criss-cross with pucks and drop passes that was handled best by young players like Ryan Callahan and Brandon Dubinsky who did those drills for him in Hartford. Players later said that he did start giving them a few ideas of specific things he wanted them to do, but the coach himself said that he doesn't want to confuse the players by giving them too much too soon, that his immediate focus is to get then to believe in themselves again and get them back to their winning ways.

One of the areas he will immediately try to improve is, of course, the power play, recognizing that it has been an albatross and can have a big impact if successful. He said that he himself will take control of the power play while Schoeny takes on the penalty killers. He also reiterated what Glen Sather said last night, and that is that he wants to use an attacking style of play. But he did say that he will adjust if necessary -- he said he was too late in realizing last year in Tampa that his defense could not handle their end of the load and pulled back somewhat to help them. That of course is exactly what Tom Renney tried to do this season, so we'll have to wait and see how Torts handles it.

Sather Puts His Philosophy Squarely on the Line

Glen Sather has put himself squarely on the line by switching from the even-tempered defensive-minded Tom Renney to the fiery, attack-first John Tortorella in an attempt to save the team that he thought he shaped in the latter image over the past two summers. "I still think that we have a team that’s played very well, that we can get back to playing the way we played in the beginning of the year," he said this evening after announcing the coaching change via conference call. "We were a fast, puck-possession hockey club that was determined, worked hard, and moved the puck well. We’ve gotten away from that. That’s why we made the change in coaching personnel, to help this team move in that direction."

While empahsizing at every turn that he had nothing but respect for Renney, Sather downplayed his own personnel decisions, strongly hinting that Renney reverting back to defensive hockey is what took the life out of his team. "We had a lot of meetings with the players, we a lot of meetings with the coaching staff," he said. "We tried to analyze it the best we could. We spent a lot of time with the films, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. We had lost our zip at one point in time." He named two devastating third period collapses -- a 5-2 loss in Toronto and the 5-4 pre-Christmas loss to Washington. "We have to be more of an attack team rather than a team that’s going to pull back and back in."

Renney Hit By the Drastic Change He Refused to Make

UPDATE (2:30 PM): Tortorella has agreed to coach the Rangers, pending approval of his former team, according to the Post and TSN, where Tortorella currently works.

In his remarks upon being honored with a number retirement last night, Harry Howell said that Emile Francis, his longtime coach and general manager (who could not attend due to illness in his family), always told his team, "If you players do not do what I tell you, I will send you so far away that the Hockey News won't be able to find you." "That got everybody's attention," Howell added. Never mind the Hockey News -- the Rangers are so lost that not even Stanley (the one who located Dr. Livingstone in the wilds of East Africa) could presume to find them. So the Rangers took the drastic but inevitable step of firing head coach Tom Renney along with assistant coach Perry Pearn and his futile power play.

Renney brought this upon himself by refusing to take steps to motivate his players. In an era where the conventional wisdom is that you can’t fire a team so you fire the coach, the Montreal Canadiens sent their offensive star, ex-Ranger Alex Kovalev, home for two days, and he responded with a highly motivated return. Renney just gave his underachieving veterans more ice time. I asked him before what would turn out to be his last game as coach, "Are you nearing the point where you might consider taking some drastic action like Montreal did with Kovalev?" It was a lifeline, but he refused to take hold, responding, "I'm not sure we have that sort of dilemma. Drastic action for me might be different than drastic action for someone else. There's different ways to make that statement -- I can do some things." Asked if adjusting players' ice time was one way to get their attention, he said, "Only to try to get some people even more ice, and that's obviously at the expense of others -- try to get guys going and feeling good, get them out on the ice more."

Rangers Cry Uncle Too Quickly

The Rangers are not fragile -- they just give up too easily. They lost their game in Buffalo last night not when the Sabres scored a pair of late first period goals off a pair of lucky bounces. They lost it three minutes into the game when Ryan Miller stopped Petr Prucha, Michal Rozsival hit the goal post, and no one could get to the rebound in the slot with the net open. Here we go again, you could feel them say -- we're not scoring tonight, so we might as well stop even trying. They continued hitting and forechecking for a few minutes, creating a few more turnovers, but when it came time to take the puck to the net, they had already given up.

The last step in their demise came during the first TV time-out when Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff made an obvious adjustment -- start hitting and taking it to them, he told his no-name team. The Rangers had outhit the Sabres 11-4 to that point, they were outshooting them, outchancing them, forcing them to cough up the puck. But right after the TV time-out, the Sabres started hitting, started forechecking, started forcing the Rangers to turn over the puck. They drew a penalty, then they got the bounce the Rangers couldn't get when Nigel Dawes deflected a pass that Marc Staal had anticipated, trapping Staal for a three-on-one that Henrik Lundqvist had no chance to stop. They outshot them 23-6 in building a 3-0 lead before the Rangers finally got desperate and mounted the feeblest of comeback attempts, one that could not get traction even when Miller left the game for Patrick Lalime due to an injury caused by a collision with Scott Gomez.